Leading through uncertainty: a flagship session at Leaders’ Summit Europe 2026

One of the standout sessions at the Finance Connect Leaders’ Summit Europe 2026 in Cologne will bring together an exceptionally strong panel of senior industry leaders to address a question now facing every major lender in Europe: how do you lead through uncertainty when uncertainty itself has become structural?

Titled “Leading through uncertainty: what are the biggest challenges and how do leading lenders plan to deal with them?”, the session moves the conversation from policy to practice. While Richard Knubben’s opening keynote will set out the policy and geopolitical forces reshaping Europe’s operating environment, this discussion turns to the executives running large lending businesses and asks what those forces actually mean on the ground for strategy, risk, funding and growth.

Pascal Layan, Deputy CEO at BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions; Roland Meyer, Managing Director DACH and Poland at DLL; Zdenek Metelak, Deputy CEO at BPCE Lease; Wolfgang Kohne, Managing Director at KION Financial Services; and Bjorn van den Berg, Global Director at Sandvik Financial Services and Chair of the Captives Forum will share how their organisations are navigating an environment defined by policy reset, geopolitical fragmentation and accelerating technological change.

This will be a hard-edged, practical discussion focused on which policy shifts really matter for lenders, including the Competitiveness Compass, the reset of the AI Act and ongoing uncertainty over the future timeline for the ICE ban. The panel will explore how these shifts are feeding directly into lending decisions and portfolio strategy, and whether volatility is now being structurally priced into funding costs, credit decisions and residual values. A central theme will be who ultimately bears the cost of this volatility, whether it is lenders, customers or the wider value chain.

The session will also examine how leading lenders are building resilience and adjusting strategy in a world where uncertainty is no longer viewed as temporary but as a permanent feature of the operating environment. From funding models and risk appetite to technology investment and partnership strategy, the discussion will focus on how leadership teams are rethinking how they run their businesses in Europe’s new policy and economic reality.

Finance Connect’s Leaders’ Summit Europe 2026 explores how the EU’s response to heightened geopolitical risk is reshaping priorities around competitiveness, industrial policy and regulation, and the direct consequences for auto and equipment finance. The agenda spans both equipment finance and automotive, with sessions examining the ICE to BEV transition as a live financing challenge, AI investment and delivery, the growing role of private credit in wholesale funding, circular economy models at scale, and how as-a-service partnerships are being executed in practice across the industry.

The full agenda for Finance Connect Leaders’ Summit Europe 2026, in association with Invigors, is now available to view on the event website.

The Finance Connect Leaders’ Summit Europe 2026 will take place at KölnSKY GmbH in Cologne on 10 March, with Headline Sponsor Alfa. Attendance is by invitation only. Delegates can learn more about the event and register their interest via the Finance Connect website.